Israeli thugs! Israel is a criminal rogue nation that must be dealt with. The US must stop all aid, all weapons sales until Israel agrees to live in peace with its nieboros and returns the land it has stolen. These are the criminals that John Fetterman says criticizing is being antisemitic. Bullshit. It is being truthful and honest. Jewish people who fight the abuses of their government and their fellows are not the problem, it is the government of Israel and the Israelies who support it. Hugs
Palestinian Mohammad Salameh was building a home for his family in the Israeli-occupied West Bank for his recently engaged son. Instead, before construction was complete, a group of Israeli settlers seized the property.
Texas Democrats have spent decades trying to flip the state blue. Now, Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico says this may be their best chance yet. In a wide-ranging exclusive sit-down with The Weekend’s Eugene Daniels, Talarico responds to President Trump’s attacks on his campaign, Republican efforts to make masculinity central to the race, and why Democrats think Texas is in play. Talarico also responds to attacks from Republican nominee Ken Paxton and shares his own definition of what it means to be a “real man.”
The bar she drank at, the bed she recuperated in, the canals she daytripped to, the studio she stormed out of, the easel she painted her final masterpiece at … ahead of a major Tate show, our writer finds Kahlo’s spirit alive in Mexico City
Today you’re going to eat art,” says Federico Valdez, a chef at the School of Mexican Cuisine and a man so passionate about food he has the word Queso (Cheese) tattooed on his forearm. “Today,” continues Valdez, “you’re going to eat history.” What unfolds, in a sun-filled dining room lined with Mexican flowers, books and artefacts, is a three-course feast inspired by Frida Kahlo, her life, her art and her loves, including her first lesbian affair.
The starter, rooted in her childhood fascination with revolution, is a lightly spiced Mexican take on Russian pirozhki. The main dish – served with pulque, an agave-derived drink Kahlo loved – taps into her rebellious spirit. “It’s called Frida Against the World,” says Valdez, as we are presented with a giant stuffed chilli that sits amid a nutty, beany sauce similar to the one eaten at Kahlo’s wedding to Diego Rivera, then the most famous artist in the world, now firmly in her shadow.
“I wanted this to be hot and horny,” says Valdez, explaining that halved figs were added to reference Kahlo’s sexuality. “Her first love, with a female teacher, happened at a time when Mexico wasn’t so open. I wanted to get in all that spicy gossip. I’m not a big fan of playing it safe.”
I’m in Mexico City with a Tate delegation just as the huge jacaranda trees are blooming purple and violet across its parks and boulevards – to follow in Kahlo’s footsteps ahead of Frida: The Making of an Icon, a show of more than 30 of her works at Tate Modern in London that seems destined to be a summer blockbuster, adding yet more fuel to Fridamania.
‘This is going to blow your mind’ … chef Federico Valdez. Photograph: Courtesy Andrew Gilchrist
One work, Self Portrait With Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird, was painted in 1940 after her painful divorce from Rivera. A spider monkey, similar to the one he gave her as a present, is pulling on her thorn necklace, drawing blood. The two soon remarried, Kahlo inscribing the clocks in their house with the years of their separation and reunion.
“The exhibition is like a movie,” says Tobias Ostrander, its curator. “Frida is the star but it’s also about her life, her people, her impact.” Charting Kahlo’s rise from unknown painter to global phenomenon, the show will also examine merch (expect a Kahlo Barbie) and gauge her influence on later artists.
On display, too, will be many of the artist’s treasured possessions, including her brilliantly patternedtehuana dresses. Graciela Iturbide’s ghostly photographs of her crutches, customised medical corsets and prosthetic leg will also feature. These were taken 50 years after Kahlo’s death, when all her belongings were finally freed from the bathroom in which Rivera had ordered them to be locked away.
Unseen for 50 years … Kahlo’s prosthetic leg, captured in Graciela Iturbide’s photograph. Photograph: Courtesy of the artist
This took place at Casa Azul, the house in Coyoacán (The Place of the Coyote Owners) where Kahlo was born and spent most of her 47 years. It’s now a beautiful, beguiling museum with smooth exterior walls painted a gorgeous blue. These border shiny red concrete paths that thread through fountains and lush gardens bursting with palm, yucca, cactus and bougainvillaea. Off in a corner, seen through trees, a maroon pyramid with yellow steps displays on its ledges Rivera and Kahlo’s pre-Hispanic, Aztec and Toltec artefacts.
“We don’t know exactly where the blue came from,” says Perla Labarthe Álvarez, the museum director. “But in her diary, Frida expressed what the colour meant to her: purity, electricity and love. Because of her health – she had surgery all her life, more than 30 operations – she was at home a lot so it had to be a comfortable place where she could rest. Many of her still lifes were done in the garden. She called her home A Place Full of Places.”
It’s a perfect description. For this is a breathtakingly evocative location, even leaving aside the fact that Trotsky lived here for two years with his wife, having a brief affair with Kahlo.
‘A place full of places’ … Kahlo’s kitchen and garden at Casa Azul; her bed with its overhead mirror; and the easel adapted so she could paint on her back or in her wheelchair. Composite: Bob Schalkwijk/Andrew Gilchrist
Tours begin in the living room, with its hefty pyramid-style fireplace designed by Rivera and, as an old photo shows, once flanked by two of his macabre Judas dolls, papier-mache devils that are stuffed with fireworks and set alight at festivals. Opposite is Kahlo’s mesmerising portrait of her beloved photographer father, painted 15 years after he died, his eyes as captivating as hers.
On the walls, photos and texts detail the polio Kahlo contracted at the age of six, leaving her with one shorter leg, and the trolley-bus crash at 18 that impaled her on an iron handrail and left her in pain for much of her life, as well as unable to have children.
She could never paint this accident, even though what she did paint was often deeply painful and personal – and these works were largely created at Casa Azul, upstairs in her studio, where visitors can see the easel adapted to allow her to use brushes lying on her back or seated in her wheelchair.
‘One kick and it could take the house down’ … Kahlo’s customised boot and her ashes in an urn. Composite: Courtesy Andrew Gilchrist
In the next room is the four-poster single bed in which her mother placed an overhead mirror, giving Kahlo, frequently confined there, both a distraction and a subject. “I paint myself,” she once said, “because I am so often alone and I am the subject I know best.”
As well as her corsets, she customised her orthopaedic footwear, turning one stepped-up mid-calf red boot into a work of art. Embroidered with patterns and adorned with a blue ribbon, the chunkily laced boot now proudly stands in its own case, extraordinarily alive, looking like it could take the whole house down with one kick. Meanwhile, on a dresser, Kahlo’s ashes sit in a delightfully playful ancient urn. Boasting cartoon-like arms and legs, it’s shaped like a toad, a nod to her affectionate term for Rivera. “You found me torn apart,” says a sign, “and you took me back full and complete.”
Across the courtyard, you can see Kahlo’s crutches and corsets, one decorated with a hammer and sickle. She painted herself in these corsets, too. In Marxism Will Give Health to the Sick, a 1954 work that hangs close by, the garment has morphed into her skin, her bare breasts. A bald eagle wearing an Uncle Sam hat is being throttled while Marx’s enormous hands reach out to cradle Kahlo. As ever, her penetrating, all-seeing eyes stare out beneath that monobrow.
Throttling Uncle Sam … Marxism Will Give Health to the Sick. Photograph: Artium/Alamy
The most stunning work at Casa Azul, though, is the last one she ever painted, completed eight days before her death in 1954. Called Viva la Vida, or Long Live Life, it portrays several sun-drenched watermelons, the de facto national fruit of Mexico. In some places, their flesh is as red as blood. One has been cut in half in a crisscross pattern, echoing the Vs of the title, which appears in big black letters on another slice. It’s as if the fruit itself, life itself, is talking to you, imploring you. Live, live.
What you take from Casa Azul is an almost overwhelming sense of Kahlo’s talent, resilience and rebelliousness. “Tell us about the bomb,” someone says to Álvarez at one point, but she is out of earshot. “Is it true Frida bombed her school?” Actually, what she and her friends planted was more of a firecracker, albeit one powerful enough to blow out several windows. No one was hurt and, unlike some, Kahlo escaped expulsion.
‘It’s as if the fruit – life itself – is imploring you’ … Kahlo’s final painting, Viva la Vida. Photograph: The Artchives/Alamy
There’s a park not far off, now named after her, with a pyramid by a fountain and lifesize bronze statues of Rivera and Kahlo. She’s ahead of him, purposeful, her head half-turned, as he follows happily in her wake, smiling gently and clearly in awe of this woman, despite all his affairs. The bar they liked, La Guadalupana, still stands, a shrine to el toreo with the heads of bulls on its walls, as well as paintings and posters of fighters. Perhaps it’s more appealing if you’ve had, as Rivera and Kahlo sometimes did, “a tequila or 10”.
Downtown, we find, the streets are not so tranquil. Some are barricaded and hoarding has been placed around national monuments. These were erected in response to a recent march of 180,000 women, furious at the rates of femicide in Mexico. About 2,500 women are murdered a year, but less than a third are categorised as femicides even though there is evidence they should be. Less than a quarter of femicides are punished.
‘Clearly in awe of this woman’ … statues of Diego Rivera and Kahlo in the park named after her. Photograph: Courtesy Andrew Gilchrist
Would Kahlo have painted this outrage if she were alive today? She already did. In 1935’s Unos Cuantos Piquetitos, or A Few Small Nips, Kahlo recreates a story she read in the paper that left her incensed. A woman lies slashed and naked on a blood-splattered bed, murdered by her husband, who holds a knife and would later dismiss his crime to the police with the words of the title. Initially, Kahlo put the children in, as they witnessed the entire horror, but this was just too brutal and they have now gone.
Kahlo also painted in a studio across town, in the bohemian neighbourhood of San Ángel. It’s a beautiful, boxlike, three-storey building painted that signature blue. A rooftop bridge links it to Rivera’s much bigger workplace, a white-and-ochre structure where he would often put in 15-hour days.
Built on modernist Le Corbusier lines and now part of a museum, these studios caused a sensation when they first appeared, unadorned constructivist creations sitting among the elaborate residences of San Ángel. They’re still ringed by a superb perimeter fence of tall, perfectly placed pole-like cactuses, this being a way for both artists to bring Mexico and nature into their workplaces.
At one with nature … Kahlo’s studio with its cactus fence. Photograph: Courtesy Andrew Gilchrist
Rivera’s studio is magnificent, overflowing with ceramics and artefacts from his folk-art collection, all arranged alongside paintings and paintpots. There’s an almost party vibe: death masks sit grinning on chairs, crowds of Judas dolls leer conspiratorially around the windows, while chorus lines of strangely joyous skeletal figures dance wildly across the walls above. It feels appropriate: the parties here were legendary, attended by presidents, revolutionaries and exiles alike, as well as Hollywood stars such as Charlie Chaplin.
Over the bridge, above the bath in Kahlo’s studio toilet, you can see a copy of What the Water Gave Me, her 1938 painting of her feet as she bathed, with elements adrift on the water symbolising events in her life, from exotic plants to nude figures on a bed to an erupting volcano. There’s not a whole lot else to see in her studio, Kahlo having packed everything up and left after catching Rivera in bed with her sister. According to the museum guide, she told him: “I am going to get all my furniture and get out of here because I hate you.”
What the Water Gave Me is the favourite Kahlo painting of Helena Chávez Mac Gregor, writer of The Ribbon and the Bomb, a book about the artist’s continuing and even growing relevance. Its title refers to the words French surrealist André Breton used to describe Kahlo’s work – “a ribbon around a bomb” – although Mac Gregor thinks there’s “maybe no ribbon, only bombs” and they’re still exploding through times beyond her own, as new generations of (largely) women see themselves, their bodies, their sexualities and their struggles mirrored in her masterpieces.
“There’s the bomb of her illness,” says Mac Gregor, as she joins us for lunch at the fabulous San Ángel Inn, a former Carmelite monastery opposite the studios famed for its gardens and margaritas. “She’s vulnerable yet she’s strong and erotic, not what you might expect of someone so ill. And she was so ahead of her time, making the personal political, living on her own terms, playing with gender roles and cutting her hair. Then there are the bombs of femicide and abortion, her own.” This was chiefly to safeguard her damaged pelvis. “Frida painted these things people didn’t talk about. Even with this illness – and one year she managed only one work – she created such beauty.”
‘The parties were legendary’ … Judas dolls, paintings, skeletons and death masks at Rivera’s studio. Photograph: Courtesy Andrew Gilchrist
Clearly delighted, Mac Gregor adds: “Frida is more important than Diego Rivera now, which is weird because she was the artist she was because of him. He was a macho Mexican womaniser but he loved and supported her. And the essays he wrote about her work are amazing, talking about her representations of the interior and the exterior. He said she was going to be the most important artist in Mexico.” Kahlo didn’t stop there. When The Dream (The Bed) fetched $54.7m in 2025, this set a new world record for a female artist.
The Tate has been lucky to get any works at all, given how proud and protective Mexicans are of Kahlo, especially with the World Cup having just kicked off in their country. This was brought home to me at the Museo de Arte Moderno, where you can linger all you want in front of, say, a María Izquierdo – but gaze too long at a Kahlo and you’ll soon start to feel the pressure from other visitors to move on.
This happened to me twice: first in front of The Two Fridas, in which she explores her mixed heritage, dressing one self in European attire, the other in Mexican; and secondly at Self-Portrait with Monkeys (see top), in which Kahlo, faintly moustached, is seen with four of the creatures she kept as pets. They are often seen to represent the four pupils, nicknamed Los Fridos, who stuck with her even as her health made teaching harder and harder. Kahlo would also say that the monkeys in her work symbolised the children she could not have.
No visit to Mexico City is complete without a trip south to the floating gardens and canals of Xochimilco, for a voyage on one of the 500 colourful big gondola-like boats that ply its busy waterways. Kahlo loved to come with her family to these canals, which were created by the Aztecs. There’s a famous photo of her face hovering over the water, looking serene as she dips her arm in up to the elbow.
A song for £10 … the Axolotls board Rosamaria. Photograph: Courtesy Andrew Gilchrist
“Every boat has a female name,” says the captain of Rosamaria, our vessel, “because they are like flowers.” As we set off, smaller, faster boats speed by, bearing vendors of pulque and tacos. Before long, we are being pursued by two very loud mariachi bands, one called the Pintorescos, meaning the Picturesques, the other the Axolotls, named after the tiny, endangered and ridiculously cute species of salamander native to these waters. The Axolotls win, boarding our boat in seconds and performing for £10 a song, first Cielito Lindo (Lovely Sweet One) with its rousing singalong chorus, and then of course La Bamba.
As the Axolotls speed off in a blur of strings, brass and tight trousers, peace returns and we idle along as the afternoon sun beats fiercely down. I dangle my arm into the cool water, just like Kahlo did, and remember something Federico Valdez said as he unveiled the final course of his feast, a rice-pudding-like dish in a watermelon sauce, washed down with a liquor made from Chihuahua apples.
“This dessert is going to blow your mind,” he said, as a picture of Kahlo’s funeral appeared on the screen behind him. “Frida died – but she didn’t pass away. She was like a rocket. She just went up and up.”
I was to have an appointment this morning with my pain clinic provider. My pain medication and steroid shot provider. But first thing this morning I called into the clinic and got a less than understanding person who would only tell me her screen was different from mine and was rude, belligerent, and not really on the same brain level as I was. The result was I had no appointment today that would give me relief and let me walk.
This was important to me because my ability to walk or even function is getting less and less, but the clinic has been in the process of moving and has been the target of anger from the largest profitable medical providing system in our county. Ron and I worked for that system. They don’t like any company that provides services they have in house or contracted doctors to do so they try to either take them over, have cooperative agreements with them (meaning they get a cut of the cash) or destroy the competition. Thier responce is to try to either ruin any competition or to fold it into their company. So my pain providers who once worked in partnership with that hospital system but then refused to submit to them agreeing to be folded into the hospital system the hospital system is endeavoring to destroy. Sadly for the hospital system the patients like me were loyal and stayed with the providers we had instead of abandoning them.
The pain group grew and merged with some other groups because they needed protection from the hospital system that runs the majority of medical services in our area and provides the only hospitals for doctors that business requires access to hospital type services. Blackmail on display for the for profit healthcare system in the US.
The building they had was far too small, so they are moving. I had my last visit on the first of June as a telehealth because they couldn’t get the city inspection certificate to allow them to use the new building. My pain doctor listened to me and said I needed the next in person visit to get muscle injections and then an appointment with my pain surgeon for spine shots.
That has led to this where I get multiple emails and texts of appointments that then never appear on my patient portal. So today I got showered and dressed and Ron put my walker in the car. But then the appointment disappeared from my patient portal list and several new appointments were listed.
Which leads me to the point of this post. I was emotionally rocked at 7:45 this morning after finding out I did not have an appointment for the relief I needed and was depending on. I went to work doing the cartoons / memes / news post for today. But by 10 I was in serious pain. I took my noon medications early. It did not help and by noon I couldn’t walk. At 1 pm I took an additional 15 miligarm extended relief morphine and another 15 miligarm instant relief.
At this point Ron had done everything all day in the house and seeing how much pain I was in wouldn’t even let me do the easiest things. Ron had been doing that for weeks now trying to make sure I did not do anything that might cause me pain even to the point of getting into arguments if I should do the dishes even though for the washing part I could use my grand rolling stool.
That did not help so at 3 pm I took another 30 miligarm exstened relief morphine and another 20 miligram backlofen muscle relaxer. That did the trick. It was slow in helping but by 4 pm I could feel the relief and the frantic desperate need for the pain to stop was dissipating. By 5 pm I felt almost pain free, as pain free as I can ever be.
So why this post you might be wondering. Several reasons. I still have to finish tomorrow’s cartoons / memes / and news posts and want everyone to understand why it might be late. But most important are the draconian laws about pain medications that have swept the country mostly driven by republicans but also some democrats that want to look tough on drug abuse since they got caught doing nothing over the OxyContin scandal. So if one company convinced doctors on lies to overprescribe medication leading to massive addiction issues when those pain drugs were withdrawn politicans with no medical backgrounds or information just started setting abartary rules which made no medical sence.
So state legislators who had no expertise started to push laws that limited the amount of medications that doctors could prescribe. I want you to understand how that affected me. I was receiving a combination of medication that made it so with all my dying bones, all my bones growing in very painful ways, my immune system attacking my own body that let me live a normal life. I could walk, I could garden, I could grocery shop.
But then those drugs were taken away or reduced by nonmedical people in the Florida legislature who wanted to look tough on illegal drugs. Remember my legal drugs were prescribed by doctors that had years of experience in pain medication. So for a politician to run for reelection on being tough on illegal drug use I had my medications reduced and restricted. That was the start. Over the years legislators who were realtors or other wealthy people with no medication criteria or education background created more laws in Florida resticted my pain medication amounts that could be prescribed to me.
Which leads me to this year. I was down to the barest amount of pain medication daily along with having to have trigger point muscle injections every two months and every 6 to 8 months having spine epidurals. That of course increased the cost of each visit to my pain doctors. Grand how the government is looking after the lower incomes. But I no longer could do any yard work, couldn’t do any real house work other than folding clothing or doing a small amount of dishes. I had been basicly reduced to sitting in my chair at my desk. Then came the new fuck you from the tRump people.
RFK Jr. decided that people like me were getting too much pain relief and all we needed to do was live like he did. So he sent out a directive to all doctors that they had to get all their patients to 100 morphine equivalent levels with the goal of taking them to less than 50 morphine equivalent levels or those that did not comply would be fined and possibly lose their license.
I was well above that limit set by a toilet seat snorting cocaine addict that made his millions refuting real medical science while playing off his family name. So I got taken down another 15 milligrams of instant release with the pain doctors having to keep every visit to justify my being over that and risking their license and practice. To day I had to dip into my saved medication to function. What am I to do when they are gone?
My primary pain doctor along with my pain surgeon has recommended and sent a referral to a neurosurgeon to have some of the vertebrae/nerves repaired. But I have to have eye surgery, Ron needs eye surgery, and all of this is not covered completely by medicare. So we are on the hook for the costs. We recently paid $2,800 for Ron’s heart catheterization, which thankfully turned out he did not have any real blockages. Was that collusion between the people who did the scan and those that did the heart catheterization?
But his eye surgery will be at least $ 1,000 and mine for my eyes will be at least twice that. So my back surgery is not going to happen anytime soon. As I let everyone know my eye doctor would not even give me a prescription for glasses as she said my vision is far too compromised. Yes I will address that issue, I promised Randy after he chewed my ass off for a long time over the issue. My point is that we have a lot of medical issues and it will take time.
That flows to my last point. Tomorrows cartoons / memes / news post. It is not done yet but I am working on it. Now that I am not in excruciating pain with every breath I will try to finish up and get it scheduled. However, and I am going to regret mentioning this. Due to the medication and pain I did eat anything but a small breakfast. I simply can not stomach food now. I know the wonderful people here will tell me to use MDavis’s grand advice to use a nutritional shake and I will do so. But I wanted to be honest as I am always here even when it is painful for me, I just can’t stomach food now. Best wishes for everyone and hugs for those that want them.
Contaminated Teats Of Health Secretary Produced Tainted Dairy Products
Vats full of milk secreted by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. formed the backdrop for an FDA press conference.
WASHINGTON—In what experts are already calling one of the worst outbreaks of foodborne illness in decades, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued an urgent recall Tuesday for 40,000 gallons of RFK Jr. milk.
The recall, which covers all milk produced by the body of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was issued following widespread reports of high fever, nausea, arthritis-like symptoms, and uncontrollable diarrhea among consumers. The FDA urged Americans to throw out any RFK Jr. milk they had in their refrigerators, saying those affected would be entitled to a full refund and should take a 60-day course of the antibiotic ciprofloxacin.
“If you purchased a jug of milk pumped from Secretary Kennedy’s breasts on or after Mar. 4, 2026, you may have noticed a sulfurous smell, streaks of red pus, or visible effervescence in the liquid,” said FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, stressing that anyone who experienced blindness or vertigo after drinking the beverage should consult a healthcare provider immediately, especially if they were pregnant. “We also ask that consumers dispose of the milk by incineration instead of dumping it down the drain, which could result in the substance entering rivers and streams and cause mass aquatic die-offs.”
“We acknowledge our error in ever allowing this man’s milk to make it onto store shelves in the first place,” Makary added.
Kennedy with his milking machine.
According to sources, the recalled Kennedy dairy has been sold at wellness retailers and health food co-ops in all 50 states and includes processed RFK Jr. milk products sold under names such as Bobby Butter, Hyannis Port Farms Cheddar, and Kennedy’s Curse-Reversing Longevity Yogurt. Many of these products have been touted through official channels by the secretary himself, who as a central pillar of his “Make America Healthy Again” campaign has strongly encouraged consumption of his body’s milk.
FDA officials said the RFK Jr. milk was contaminated with E. coli, salmonella, listeria, and a previously unknown pathogen scientists have named Robertococcus kenneddi, which appears to have proliferated exclusively in the squalid and unsanitary conditions in which Kennedy lives. Inspectors described “appalling” conditions in the Georgetown residence where much of his milk was pumped, citing moldy, sweat-soaked gym equipment, five-gallon buckets of rancid beef tallow, and the rotting carcasses of several unidentifiable marine mammals.
“The spread of bacteria by RFK Jr. milk has led to numerous confirmed cases of sepsis, meningitis, and necrosis of the tongue,” said FDA microbiologist Hana Steiner, adding that she had long warned friends and relatives against consuming the poorly regulated substance. “People will say Kennedy should have been pasteurizing his milk, and of course he should have, but I’m not sure it would have mattered. A lot of these bacteria have mutated in the dank, humid piles of unwashed jeans found on the floor of his home, and many have become antibiotic-resistant thanks to his frequent swims in sewage-tainted waters.”
While the FDA has ordered an indefinite halt to the distribution of RFK Jr. milk, some MAHA diehards have decried the crackdown as federal overreach, with Kennedy himself criticizing scientists who have questioned his milk’s safety.
“The probiotic cultures in my milk are a feature, not a bug, and any negative reactions people have experienced are the result of a lack of ferments in the American diet,” Kennedy said in a recent video message in which he is seen pumping and drinking a bright yellow glass of his own milk to demonstrate its safety. “There are no dangerous additives in here, just pure, natural goodness. Americans have neglected their gut microbiomes for so long that even the gentle, nourishing milk of their health and human services secretary upsets their stomachs. That’s how bad things have gotten.”
“The obvious answer is for people to drink more of my milk, not less,” Kennedy continued. “It’ll take more than some misguided recall to stop me from lactating for the health and longevity of this nation.”
Yesterday I had a relapse after nearly a week of feeling very energetic compared to lately. Last night I went to bed early. I had started an email to MDavis who sent me a beautiful, encouraging email and it has been three weeks but I was just feeling up to replying to them. But today I had my yearly eye appointment with the same eye doctor who referred me to the eye surgery center for needed cataract surgery. If anyone needs reminding that was a year ago when I was on the gurney with IVs in and eyes medicated but as they were about to take me into surgery the anesthesiologist stopped everyone to ask me questions. She went over my medical list with me and then sadly said I take more heavy pain medications daily than she could give me during the operation. That would mean that I would have to have eye surgery without any sedation. When I told her I was sensitive to anything near my eyes she told everyone to pause and she went to talk to the surgeon. They agreed that I would need to go to a much larger surgery center that could put me under enough anesthesia that would knock me totally out.
So today I saw the same eye doctor at a much bigger facility they had joined. Long story short after the exam the doctor told me the bad news. My current vision is far beyond what glasses could help with. She was emphatic in saying I must get my cataract surgery done as soon as possible. She went over everything with me and detailed why she couldn’t give me a prescription for glasses that would make it so I could see the computer, the phones, the Ipad, and see well enough to drive better. At this point my vision is so bad they couldn’t even make the letters smaller than the largest ones they wanted me to read clear.
She wanted to know why I had not followed up with their surgery center’s referral to the larger university run on in Naples as I was referred to. I explained to her the horrifically emotional and financially draining year we had had. She listened and when I explained Ron and I had decided his eyes needed to be done before mine as he has a torn lens and eye inflammation issues, she understood and agreed to take him on as a patient. But she kept pushing for me to get my eyes done in the next 6 months. She said she would send the referral, which was good for 6 months and it normally took that long to get set up with the facility and have the necessary visits. She added that if in the 6th months I was not financially ready to do it the surgery center in Naples would extend my time to have it done. But she again pushed that I did not have a lot of time to wait with my diminished vision. She asked how I did my daily stuff and I explained to her I have my large desktop monitors set to 250 and that my browser is set to 110% which I take up to 130 some days. I also showed her my two over the counter readers I have which one is 150 and the other is 175, which I use for my phone, tablet, and the computer monitors.
I explained all this to Ron as we drove home. He agreed to get an appointment with her to start his eye surgery but the closest appointment he could get was in August. At which point he got upset with me and said we would have to move forward with my eye surgery even before his. He went on at length about how he had noticed how I was struggling on the computers and with things I was trying to do. He mentioned the lighted magnifying glasses I keep around to help me read stuff. He mentioned how now I was having to have him read everything that came in mail and instructions to me. He reminded me that when he asked me to help him set up his sister’s new electronic entry system on the house she just bought I had to have him do the actions as I explained it to him as I couldn’t see the key pad clearly enough even with a bright light on them. Then he dropped the mother of all bomb shells on me which made me give in. He wondered with my vision so bad how I well I was seeing to drive. He was getting more and more upset. As I don’t think he is a good driver and I think I am a far better driver I gave in. So …
I said I would make supper. I got my very tall adjustable stool out and offered to make fried eggs, fried potatoes, fried bacon, and fresh ham steak I cooked in a large frying pan of water. All with a side of two slices of toast. Ron loved the idea which stopped him from harassing me about my eyes. I do love to cook and it was emotionally satisfying for me. I was unable to eat much of mine but I did eat the potatoes along with all the ham I took, a strip of bacon and half a piece of toast. But Ron ate most of what I couldn’t which is why he blames me for his current weight. Picture below. Hugs
This clip was with a reporter detailing the abuses in ICE detention facilities and the illegal actions of ICE agents and for profit prison staff. Profit over people as these ICE and prison staff do not see the detainees as humans like themselves. What is concerning is ICE is learning how to use existing laws to make the local law enforcement work against the will of the people. This young man wont admit he was attacked by ICE agents instead saying he thinks he hit a tree limb in the confusion but I showed Ron the video and he said the guy looks to him like he was hit repeatedly and hard in the head and possibly the body as well. When will we as a people see that these abuses are so very similar to the abuses suffered by the minorities in 1930s Geermany. Hugs
Life has been happening here with me this couple of weeks, and I have a few things I’ve picked up here and there to post when I’m busy. Most of this is positive, because why not?
Hey-today is World Environment Day! Let’s be proud to care for our home; we all get overheated.
June 5, [since 1972]
World Environment Day was established by the U.N. General Assembly to commemorate the opening of the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment in Sweden. The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) was established as a result of the conference.
UNEP’s mission: To provide leadership and encourage partnership in caring for the environment by inspiring, informing, and enabling nations and peoples to improve their quality of life without compromising that of future generations.
This sunlight-powered desalination breakthrough turns seawater into fresh water while harvesting valuable minerals.
Date: May 31, 2026
Source:University of Rochester
Summary: Scientists have developed a solar desalination system that turns seawater into drinking water without creating environmentally damaging brine. Special laser-textured metal panels use sunlight to evaporate water while automatically moving salt deposits away from the working surface, preventing clogging. The process was successfully tested with water from three oceans and can recover nearly all salts as solids. Those leftover materials could even become a source of valuable lithium for batteries.
Irrefutable proof of what Spanish researchers and wildlife experts had long suspected, and long feared, finally presented itself in the form of a grainy video that was shot on a minuscule island in the Balearics in April 2024.
Ribboning its way through the turquoise waters that separate the east coast of Ibiza from the islet of Santa Eulària 450 metres away, came a pale and solitary horseshoe whip snake in search of new territory and fresh sustenance.
The arrival of the snake on Santa Eulària, recorded by a local wildlife ranger, confirmed that the insatiable invader from the Spanish mainland – which has almost wiped out Ibiza’s endemic population of dazzlingly coloured wall lizards – had opened up a new front.
“There’d beenincreasing anecdotal evidence from fishermen and tourists who’d seen the snakes swimming, so we’d thought it was happening very often,” said Oriol Lapiedra, a biologist at the Centre for Ecological Research and Forestry Applications (Creaf) in Catalonia. “But this was the first proper [evidence] we’d had of a snake swimming from Ibiza to the islet.”
The horseshoe whip snake, a non-venomous reptile found across southern and eastern Spain, has become an existential threat to the lizards since it began appearing on the island two decades ago.
Its rapid colonisation has been attributed to the fashion among wealthy property owners in Ibiza for importing ancient olive trees from mainland Spain to adorn the grounds of their homes. Unbeknown to them, however, the trees – replete with their nooks and hollows – have provided ideal travel berths for hibernating snakes and snake eggs. (snip-MORE)
Scottie's Playtime 